Land vehicles propelled by sail includes such toy boats as that illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 2,351,542, in which a reversed tricycle wheel structure is utilized to support a sail or sails which approximate sloop rigging. Here the rigging is fixed by virtue of the jib sheet and the main sheet being cleated down. This vehicle is unattended and no radio control is provided for the toy boat of the abovementioned patent. Moreover, there is no provision for automatic steering of the toy boat. The problem with this and any other unmanned or unattended landsailers is that the vehicle readily tips over in even moderate winds, since there is no provision for prevention of capsizing or tipping over, either in terms of the steering of the vessel or in terms of providing other mechanisms to prevent the tipping over of the vehicle.
As illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,049,287, attended or manned wind driven vehicles or landsailers have been provided with accommodations for an individual so that the individual may trim the main sheet in order to prevent capsizing of the landsailer. However in model vehicles which are unattended, the tipping over of the vehicle is the most serious problem.
Thus, in terms of providing a successful unattended model landsailer, it will be appreciated that the most important problem is to provide some way of preventing the model landsailer from tipping over. Even if this were provided by a radio controlled steering system or by a radio controlled sheeting system, the traditional tricycle gear are provided for a model vehicle, this does not result in the same type of heeling as experienced in a water-borne vessel with a keel, in which the keel resists the action of the wind against the sail. Thus not only are model unattended landsailers difficult to keep upright, but also the way in which the model landsailer reacts to the wind varies markedly from the way the water-borne sailing vessels react to the wind.
More specifically, water-borne sailing vessels start to heel quickly upon the reaction with a gust of wind, but then react more rigidly as the vessel heels until such time as the vessel achieves a more or less maximum angle of heel which the vessel maintains as long as the wind velocity does not change. Previous unattended wind driven models react quite differently in that up until the time that the model heels at all, the model is level with the ground. Should the wind velocity overcome the center of gravity of the model, it heels over very quickly such that it tips over without any notable resistance to the wind. Even if it were possible to remotely control the direction of such a model landsailer, the reaction time to keep the vehicle upright would be too short.
In summary, prior art model landsailers do not give the visual impression or feedback of a water-borne sailing vessel which makes the actions of the model sailing vessel difficult, if not impossible, to control via remote control means. Either the prior art vessel tips over before corrective action can be taken or the model vessel does not give any indication of the power of the wind acting on it until it is too late to do anything about it. This makes such model landsailers very frustrating devices to sail and poor devices for the instruction of sailing, since their actions do not in any way approximate those of a water-borne sailboat.
Water-borne model sailboats have been provided with multiple radio control channels, such as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,280,501, in which a model sailboat is provided with radio controlled sheeting of a main sail as well as radio controlled rudders. It will be appreciated that the direction of the water-borne model may be controlled by control of the rudder to kill the heel of the vessel, or the main sheet may be released via radio control to kill the heel of the vessel. Model sailboat radio controlled sheeting winches are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,190,980, again for water-borne type vehicles.
It will of course be appreciated that water-borne vehicles have been provided with outriggers for prevention of capsizing and in general, these outriggers have been either of a rigid variety or the point of attachment of the rigid outrigger to the hull or body of the ship is hinged with resilient means such as shock absorbers to limit the movement of the hinged outrigger. Such hinged outriggers are illustrated, for instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,881,440; 1,128,062; and 3,954,077. Rigid outriggers, especially for iceboats, including wheeled iceboats, include U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,238,464 and 1,082,831. Moreover, the positioning of pontoons or outriggers with respect to a central hull, is described in terms of extensible spring-loaded supports by U.S. Pat. No. 4,192,247. In none of these patents is the horizontal outrigger flexible along its length.